A Pocket Full of Change -

Don’t Buy The Pie

November 24, 2023 / A Pocket Full Of Change

All this talk of inflation. Prices continuing to rise along with company profits. Gas is up! Groceries are up! Car prices are up! The sky is up! A bunch of various numbers are listed. 8%. No! 6%! No! 7.5% Cancel the Thanksgiving dinner! It’s too expensive! No one can afford anything! Etc., Etc.

It may feel like you’re hopelessly trapped, in this endless cycle of money that’s evaporating faster than you create it! Perhaps that’s true in some aspects. But for others, I find it really quite simple, especially for food stuffs. You want to minimize and perhaps avoid a massive grocery bill that’s not just 7% inflated, but perhaps even up to 50% or more inflated? Well… Just don’t buy the pie!

Granola Bar Gold

November 11, 2023 / A Pocket Full Of Change

I’ve been thinking about food a lot lately, specifically on how to minimize costs. We spend a lot on food. How much? I’m not entirely sure, but I’d bet well over 10k/year, probably even closer to 14 or 15k. And I hate it. I hate it so much! There are a number of contributing factors, such as the inflation issue we’ve been having of late, especially greedflation. Some foods also just cost a lot more than others, especially pre-processed foods. But one thing that is hard to get around is protein We eat a lot of chicken, and sometimes steaks here and there. But lean protein is generally quite expensive.

There’s also the kids’ snacks, which although convenient and somewhat tasty, come at a cost premium. Especially if you aren’t able to get them in bulk. We go through a lot of basic snacks like granola bars (chocolate coated and uncoated), nutrigrain bars, and bear paws.

But since getting into the hobby of bread baking recently got me thinking that it can’t be that hard to make a homemade, cheap and nutritiously delicious snack right? I mean, the main ingredients in those kids snacks are essentially flour, sugar, and oats. Those things are dirt cheap as far as ingredients go. And there’s a ton of internet recipes available. The trick is finding out which ones are actually descent, and which ones would actually work for me. So let’s see what it takes to make some Granola Bar Gold!

Baking Dough to Make $ome Dough!

October 30, 2023 / A Pocket Full Of Change

We’ve all been feeling it lately. The sharp rise in the price of everything due to recently unheard of inflation rates. Pandemic, War, Supply Chain Shortages, you name it! They’ve all contributed in part. Among other things, the price of food has felt it the worst. Whether it’s due to actual direct inflationary causes, or perhaps more blatant price gouging (aka Loblaws), whose to say. And does it really matter at this point? That shite’s gone crazy high.

Not too long in the recent past, you use to be able to… :

…get a dozen eggs at shoppers routinely for ~$1.79.

…get a loaf of bread at No Frills for ~$1.69.

…buy a 24 pack of pop for under ~$8-9.

…and you used to be able to buy a cheap microwave dinner for $1.50

Not anymore!

Riding It To The Bottom – Part 2 – Ditching the Bonds

October 19, 2023 / A Pocket Full Of Change

I published “Riding it to the bottom” on July 6, 2022. Shortly thereafter, I ended up selling all my entire bond ETF portfolio and thus converted my asset allocation from an 80/20 stock-bond split, into a 100% stock allocation. I know I had written about staying the course, which is still what I stand by. Whatever your personal investment plan statement instructs you to do, is what you should do, as it is based on your own personal situation, comforts and risk levels.

However, I didn’t just randomly switch over to 100% stocks. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and decided to dust off my investment plan for review. I hadn’t really updated it in a couple of years and the whole situation with both the stock and bond market heavily plummeting caused me to re-evaluate my overall plan.

And I did. I thought about it a lot, and about the pros and cons of keeping or ditching bonds, and what my overall goals going forward should look like.

Why I Hate – Episode 5: Benefit Improvements

September 22, 2023 / A Pocket Full Of Change

HOOPP recently released their 2022 Annual Report. On their website, they list numerous positives and benefits that the pension plan offers. What was also noted was that these benefits have been given improvements as of late.

“Proudly serving…since 1960!”, “Enhancing retirement security…”, “Successful investment approach”, “Consistently healthy funded status”.. It’s all Sunshine and Lollipops! Then you get to bottom of the page where they drop the transparency bomb of their total investment return for 2022; in small print no less.

-8.60%!!!!

Ohhhh boy… While it is highlighted, HOOPP doesn’t specifically talk about this significant loss of assets. And even though it looks bad, it’s not nearly so dire as the benchmark that they compare themselves too, having lost -13.21%! HOOPP then clarifies that the difference of these two numbers creates a “value-added” return of +4.61%!!! A positive number is a positive number, even if the overall is negative; that makes sense, right?

Why I Hate Pensions – Episode 4: The Balrog

March 17, 2023 / A Pocket Full Of Change

Image from Balrog | Non-alien Creatures Wiki | Fandom

“…Demons with whips of chain and claws of steel….shrouded in fire, darkness and shadow…”

“This is a foe beyond any of you” -Gandalf

Would I be so bold as to equate the HOOPP pension with one of the most monstrous horrors of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings? Should I go that far? Is it really that bad? Hmmm… So many rhetorical questions, about to be given concrete answers! Perhaps in matters such as this, the question is not “if” you find something of a Balrog caliber, but “when”… So… The answer to these questions is yes. The deeper we dig, the more we’ll find. And in this episode, we’re going to unearth the buried; quantify the un-quantifiable! And Uncover hidden secrets! Read on if you dare!

Why I Hate Pensions: Episode 3 – Sketchy Descriptions

February 1, 2023 / A Pocket Full Of Change

Pensions are billion dollar businesses. HOOPP for example, is worth ~$114 billion (as of Dec 2021), up from 104 billion in 2020; that’s about an 11.28% gain. But how much of that 10 billion increase do you think that the members of the pension actually benefit from? Was it the full amount? Or perhaps only a fraction of that? And if so, where did the rest go? And more interestingly, how is HOOPP increasing in net value when more pension dollars are being paid out each year than are being contributed? Sounds sketchy to me…

A Pocket Full of Change